G-Fafif

Heard Kid on the FAN with Steve Somers in the 2 o'clock hour. No, of course I'm not campaigning for Willie's job, he said, while continuing to campaign for it. He regrets if referencing that moment of trauma for our entire nation, and particularly for the Bamberger family was in any way offensive.

The first Binghamtonian called up to New York since Pelfrey and Owens in '06.

Managers hate Tim and always have.

Did he also mention, "We all remember George Bamberger was replaced in June in California"?

Faulty (or nonexistent) research earlier regarding starters this series and their previous pitching at Coors Field. To update: Vargas has thrown four games in Denver, three starts, 5.40 ERA. Coming into last night, OP had a 7.24 ERA at Coors; I'll bet it's higher now. Maine still hasn't pitched there. If he's smart, he'll get out of town.

Other than referring to him as Thomas George Seaver (oh we Met pickers), wonderful.

Thanks Irish. I like the one who will watch the Rockies in heaven but not when they're trailing by six.

At the end of the Coneheads movie, it was revealed Beldar didn't have one. But then again, they were from France.

Remember 2001? The first part? When whatever euphoria remained from the pennant run of 2000 dissipated early and often? Welcome to the 2008 Colorado Rockies. They are not enjoying the sequel. The Mets head into Denver tonight to face a team in far worse 2007 doldrums than they are. Your defending National League champions are 18-29, mired in fourth place, ten behind the Diamondbacks, nowhere near contention. And while the '07 Rockies took a while to get in gear � 20-27 and in last at the same juncture � asking a miracle team (14-1 to make the playoffs then 7-0 to win the NLDS and NLCS before a long nap removed their World Series edge) to dip twice into the same bag of tricks seems daunting. Historical aside: After 135 games, the '74 Mets had the same uninspiring record at the '73 Mets: 63-72; the '73 Mets finished 19-7 from there and in first while the '74 Mets, in a more competitive division, limped home 8-19. No problem, however, we were back in postseason play a mere dozen years later. On ESPN.com recently, Rob Neyer asked Jonah Keri to mull how alive or dead certain slow-starting would-be contenders were. Keri on the Rockies: ]I say muerto. You can't deny this was a talented team that blazed through the league last September. Even more encouraging was the fact that this team was young, with core players like Matt Holliday, Garrett Atkins and Brad Hawpe in their prime, and Troy Tulowitzki, Franklin Morales, Ubaldo Jimenez and Jeff Francis looking like they'd only get better with age. But I look at it another way: Absolutely everything that could go right for the Rockies during last year's late surge did. Everyone was hitting, you had rookie pitchers doing reasonable impressions of a peak-era Lefty Grove, everyone was healthy � it was all just off the charts. This year Tulo started the year at a much lower level, and now he's out for a long time due to injury. As talented as Morales is, he's shown he's not quite ready to be effective over a full major league season. Holliday has predictably regressed from superhuman to just very good, second base has been a wasteland and Manny Corpas' deal with the devil ran out real quick. I still like this team's chances long-term, but I think they're done for this season. For a closer-up view, I visited Purple Row, one of the relatively few Rockies blogs (relative to the plethora of Mets blogs). It would break my heart if we weren't playing them this weekend (and getting our own psyche slapped around by our own team). This was the post du jour: ]It blows my mind when I see people posting that they aren't going to be going to games, that the season is over, that all is lost and to trade away the team. Things are not over. I am not going to turn the other way. This is my favorite team playing my favorite sport and I'm sure as hell going to support them. I am not a fair weather, bandwagon jumping "win or I'll stop supporting you" mentality fan Selected comments: ]� It just makes me sad to watch this right now. It's just HARD to CARE such. � We need to lift this team up, rather than trying to drive nails in their coffin. � It just makes it tough to sit and watch them losing all the time when you KNOW they can be better. � I support the Rockies 200%. 'Giving up' is not in my dictionary. I love the Rockies with all my heart & soul and always will and even when I die I'll be cheering them on up in heaven, but with this slump they're in, it's hurting me bad enough that I end up changing the channel if the other team's leading 6 to 0. � The toughest thing is that after last year, I really felt like the franchise had turned the corner. For the first time since the '90s, I went into a season with pretty high expectations. Last April/May weren't as tough because the team was doing what it had before. Last night, when we fell down 5-0 to the D-Backs, I turned off the game played GTA 4. I would never do that last season, but I truly felt that there was no way the Rockies were going to win that game. It is getting harder to watch this team every day. Rough stuff. 2001 rough. Starting Pitching Matchups: Friday: Oliver Perez vs. Greg Reynolds (RHP) Saturday (on Fox!): Claudio Vargas vs Jeff Francis (LHP) Sunday: John Maine vs Jorge De La Rosa (LHP) Reynolds "is on the short list of what's gone right for the Rockies," according to mlb.com's Thomas Harding. He took over for Mark Redman this month and "both his starts have been eye-openers". I assume this means we're screwed. Francis has gone to seed: 1-4, ERA near 6.00. I assume this means we're screwed. Guy on Sunday has name like guy who pitched nightcap for Braves...I assume this means we're screwed. None of our starters seem to have pitched at Coors Field. Hope the humidor's working. Notes: The last time we played at Coors Field, we got our asses kicked and our heads handed to us on a silver platter, as if both are simultaneously anatomically possible. The scores were 6-2, 11-3 and 17-7. The last of those was on July 4 and I was ticked off that the Mets scored their final run, because it would have been cool, sort of, to have seen 17 to 6 on the fourth of July. Back then the Mets were in first place and the Rockies were, at best, on the fringes of contention I heard Yorvit Torrealba is suing us. Eff him. He's batting .223 and, no, he's not hiding his value in more modern stats. To paraphrase something some press box wag once said about the relative values of Dock Ellis and Doc Medich, I think Brian Schneider is a better Yorvit than this guy. Kaz Matsui is on the Astros. I totally forgot. I actually just went to look up how he's doing in Colorado. I didn't bother checking on how he's doing in Houston. David Wright at Coors Field lifetime: .471 BA, 1.315 OPS, 5 HR and 20 RBI in 51 AB. Church, Anderson, Delgado and Reyes all have impressive averages as well. Beltran's hitting .240 there. Fernando Tatis: .170. Maybe Willie will give him a start. Todd Hundley hit 10 homers and drove in 35 runs in 106 Coors Field at-bats. He once pissed off Rockies pitching coach Frank Funk by saying the upper deck there whispered to him. As did a bottle of HGH (allegedly). Joe McEwing's career ended there on a dirty slide by whatshisname the busher...T.J. Hooker or some such useless name (J.D. Closser, it turns out...eff him, too). McEwing was Wright's first big league mentor. David has been avenging him in Denver ever since. I visited Coors Field in 1995. You can read about the beer I drank here. When I signed up for the Rockies, I didn't realize we play them three times this year.

Eighteen years ago, Howard Stern was to be profiled in Rolling Stone and mused on the air about what regular-guy thing he was going to do to convince the writer assigned to follow him around (David Wild) that he was, well, a regular guy. Tom Cruise had just been profiled and, if I recall correctly, had "suddenly" decided to stop and play basketball as if that were something Tom Cruise might very well do. I don't remember if Howard followed through. He kind of ruined the illusion by calling Wild during his show and asking him what activity he should take him along on to show that he was normal. That picture Jordan paints of the young A's by the pool and Catfish Hunter (one of my favorite non-Mets even when he was a Yankee) is wonderful.

]This team isn't even any good at being bad. Ouch. Truth hurts.

Two blasts and a bloop!

Fman99 wrote: Paul Lukas and Richard Grossinger are dumb fucking ****s. I'd like to see them simultaneously killed in a staged gay ritual double suicide, a la the football players in "Heathers." Any argument that invokes "Heathers" makes sense to me.

It takes all kinds and everyone's entitled to his or her opinion, but this was atrocious, especially from someone whose work I've long admired. The bit about the DH is particularly absurd. Lukas' piece reads like a parody of somebody who would strain to find Bad Stuff 'Bout Piazza. Richard Grossinger affected the same tone in assessing Piazza in his bitchy, too-precious, frustrating and ultimately unsatisfying The New York Mets: Ethnography, Myth and Subtext (you would think with a title like that it couldn't miss): ]Mike Piazza, the epitome of the millennial New York Mets, a huge numbers and power guy around whom nothing ever jelled; a bogus catcher (he needed a position), he couldn't throw out base runners if his life depended on it... he was a hard guy to see past, sucking all the energy without converting that charisma into championship-level leadership... yes, Piazza was good, but he wasn't a difference-maker; he was more noise and hoopla than clutch or bottom line. Like I said, it takes all kinds.

Plenty cool for the uncool likes of me. In that spring training camp, joining Hendu and Krane (who borrow Chico's soap and never give it back) to offer perspective on "social leper" Escuela's attempted return to glory was No. 59, Nelson Briles, slated for Joe Torre's 1979 roster but cut as a budget move in favor of whichever rookie among Allen, Scott and Orosco would have otherwise been sent down if the Mets hadn't been so cheap. Briles (who, as you might recall from the brief YouTube run of Game 4 '73 WS, sang the National Anthem at Shea) never got to wear a Mets uniform in Flushing, yet Chico did. And he lined up in the Old Times introductions next to active Eddie, no less.

I remember thinking it was odd that on "SNL" Bill Murray interviewed Steve Henderson as part of the story tracking Chico's comeback. How could Chico be No. 5 while Steve is No. 5? Can't wait for the answer!

Felt an eerie flashback to August 30, 2003 when young Jose lay on the ground at second to end the game. Different injury, different expectations, different time...but still. Not pretty. Be careful with Churchie. As with Jose five years ago, he's a big chunk of what we have to look forward to.

Centerfield wrote: Don't use it as a way to sell tickets to a Wednesday night game against the Pirates. Lordy, let's hope we're not in that position again for many, many years to come. (And even if we are, amen brother.)

Valadius wrote: Many of you grew up with Tom Seaver as your Met hero. Well, I'm the lone poster of the generation that grew up with Mike Piazza as their Met hero. I'm with the kid even if I'm presumably twice his age. Piazza defined one of the three wonderful eras of Mets baseball, strode it like a Colossus. I grew up with Tom Seaver as my baseball hero but when it comes to this team, the only generation I'm part of is Generation Met, and for my demographic money, Piazza is no less than the third-most important player this franchise has ever had. If you want to split the mid-'80s vote several ways, then only Seaver definitively outweighs his impact (though I'd still put Mex a bit ahead in the scheme of things). I can't look at 31 on anybody else's front or back. I can't see the point of mothballing it and leaving it in limbo. Mike Piazza packed a career's worth of thrills into an eight-year stay, even if only five, at the outside, were prime. But what prime they were. Let's give ourselves a treat. Let's nudge the pantheon open a wee bit more. Let's give Tom some company. 41, shake hands with 17 and then the two of you high-five 31 before Citi Field gathers rust. We will be no cheaper for it. I swear on a stack of ten-run innings, we'll only be enriched.

Nice play...nice play, nice play, nice play...nice play...nice play. Bizarre to think Jose and David have never faced Glavine. He was a Met a long time.

I knew the Mets should have dressed as Marlins.

And Wagner wasn't talking about Delgado the other day either.

2008 has been disappointing in spots but not in the same spots 2007 was.

Glavine must have thought he was still a Met and pictured Castillo as a Marlin.

Mets angle: Jeff Torborg caught Koufax's perfect game, Ryan's first no-hitter plus Bill Singer's no-hitter. Roseboro caught Koufax's first two no-hitters, Doug Camilli caught the third. Ryan's no-hitters caught by: Torborg; Art Kusnyer; Tom Egan; Ellie Rodriguez; Alan Ashby; John Russell; and Mike Stanley. Seven no-hitters, seven receivers. No personal catchers for Nolan. None of his no-hitters caught by Grote, Martin or Dyer.